1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to injectors, and in particular to a high-speed hypodermic injection system for injecting animals or people at predetermined depths of injection with various safety features.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Hypodermic injection systems have been developed for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of injecting bodies of both animals and persons. Routine procedures against diseases and the possibility of pandemic or bioterror events makes the ability to have a high rate of injections very important in view of the vast numbers of injections to be made on herds of domestic animals such as cattle, goats, sheep, swine, chickens, turkeys and the like; water animals such as fish and shellfish including lobsters, shrimp, crabs and the like; and groups of persons such as school children, civilian populations, military forces, and the like. Furthermore, there are many problems to be contended with. Many bodies present difficulty in making effective injections due to the hair or fur, hair follicles, skin thickness, age of the species, their environment, etc. U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,716, incorporated herein by reference, successfully contends with many of these problems. It has been found that injections made to skin-covered bodies can be particularly effective and not damaging to the muscle beneath the skin if the injection begins as a well controlled jet stream in the dermal or subcutaneous regions, so that no needles ever penetrate the muscle during the delivery, and the foregoing U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,716 provides a perforator system for effecting the capability and effectiveness of such injections. A perforator system as used herein means an assembly having an injection shaft long enough to pierce the dermis or other outer covering of an animal or human, but not long enough to damage or otherwise affect the internal muscle of animals or humans, or otherwise extending much beyond the outer covering. Perforator systems have perforator shafts generally shorter than standard needles. While the importance and effectiveness of perforator delivery is clearly described in these prior art systems, they did not disclose the use of hubs from which the perforator shaft extends, which is different from hubs for standard needles, to totally prevent the use of standard needles whose length can reach 1.5 inches. The prior art did not deal with the issue of long needles that often bend, and even break, an event that sometime leaves a needle in the consumable portion of the animal, not to mention the pain to the animal or the scarring/abscesses they cause deep in the muscle, or the economic loss they incur to the producers. Furthermore, whereas hypodermic injection systems, especially for humans, have been a single dosage from a conventional needle and syringe, more effective systems using both cartridges holding injectate or injectate reservoirs were discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,716 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,190, also incorporated herein by reference. Greater control over the injection process is achieved using appropriate electromechanical devices, and the foregoing U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,716 discloses a direct-drive system that uses the motor force to implement an injection without first requiring the compression of a spring mechanism for applying the desired injection pressure.
Another problem particularly prevalent in animals is the likelihood of sudden movement just prior to or during an injection. No device has heretofore been available for disabling an injection if sudden movement occurs in the animal being injected, an event that could lead to a faulty injection that is both ineffective and damaging to the animal. Also, no device has heretofore been available where the perforator assembly is attached to a flexible coupling to further reduce the bending torque on the perforator hub assembly when working with aggressive animals.
Another aspect of hypodermic injection system technology is the failure heretofore of quickly and effectively changing delivery volumes over a range of values depending on the type of body being injected, the location of the injection and the nature of the injectate being delivered. Furthermore, prior electromechanical hypodermic injection systems did not provide such safety features as effective disablement if a battery supplying electric energy became depleted below a value capable of the desired injection parameters. Effective and efficient control of the potential damage from overheating has not been available on electro-mechanical hypodermic injection systems. Earlier hypodermic injection systems did not provide for a response to available information regarding the body temperature of the animal or person.
There are other shortcomings of earlier hypodermic injection systems which have not heretofore been effectively overcome, such as an identification system for advising what type of an injection or therapeutic procedure a particular animal or person needs and/or the necessary dosage required. There has been lacking a programmed control and identification system that restricts a particular injection system to one and only one compound such as immunosterilization products that must avoid contact with any other product.
Prior hypodermic injection systems have not been quite so diverse in field locations as that disclosed in the foregoing two patents, but a hypodermic injection system with such mobility and even wider capabilities as in the present invention have not been known at all. Furthermore, the prior art did not provide a variety of capabilities with an easy-to-use, highly-effective control system.
Various safety features for preventing needle sticks and for the safe disposal of needles or perforators have been made in the art. See for Example the foregoing U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,569,190 and 6,056,716. As further disclosed herein, improved protection at the time of use, as well as faster, safe disposal of needles or perforators is always desirable in hypodermic injection systems for injecting large numbers of bodies or making multiple injections in any number of bodies.
Prior art multi-shot hypodermic injection systems transfer or “pull” injectate from a vial for transfer to an injection chamber at the end of each injection cycle. The bottle or vial has a septum covering the opening to the bottle, and the prior art uses a septum spike for piercing the septum at the inside of a hub or rim surrounding the opening to allow access to the injectate fluid. The prior art has connections for securing the bottle in a fixed position to retain a secure seal with the septum, while at the same time assuring that the bottle cannot be pulled away during use. Securing the bottle is usually done in one of the following two ways. In one case, a vial retainer surrounds the bottle from top to bottom and attaches the bottle to the base of the septum spike. A screw or other means is used to apply force against the bottom of the bottle to press the hub of the bottle against the base of the spike. This arrangement is limited to the respective bottle sizes and requires a different vial retainer for each bottle size. A second method relies on the standard diameter and height of the bottle or vial hubs available. A gripping device is located directly behind the rear shoulder of the hub once the bottle is attached to the injection system to firmly secure the bottle in place during use. An advantage of the latter arrangement is that the hub size is standard. The prior art for the hub attachment arrangement relies on a resilient interference of a plastic or metal component which snaps into position behind the hub when it reaches the sloping point in the septum spike. The engagement or release of the bottle is achieved by a pulling or pushing force alone. Some designs require the user to apply a squeezing force on the retainer so as to open a pathway for the hub to pull off freely.